


Gotham City Immortals (English Version)

by Stefanobrancol1



Category: Alternative Universe - Fandom, Batman - All Media Types, Highlander - All Media Types
Genre: Alternative Gotham city, F/M, Gen, Highlander Immortals, M/M, Multi, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-05-12 13:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19229848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stefanobrancol1/pseuds/Stefanobrancol1
Summary: Jim Gordon doesn’t know Immortals exist. He doesn’t know he met one already. He doesn’t know he’s about to become one





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Gotham City Immortals](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17532206) by [Stefanobrancol1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stefanobrancol1/pseuds/Stefanobrancol1). 



[ Jim’s]

You don’t wake up in the morning thinking: “today I die.”

 

When you do a job like mine, always in touch with crime, and death, the feeling, the presentiment, is so geared in the system that at the end of the day you ignore it, like the alarm of the car’s seat belts that blink since forever and you don’t care anymore.

 

My buzzer I’ve switched it off the day I’ve put for the first time my foot in IRAQ years ago and i’ve never switched it on back. 

If I did, I couldn’t get up in the morning anymore.

 

if I switched it on this morning, maybe it would have gone differently and in this moment I wouldn’t be here, with eight inches of steel stuck in my chest.

 

Dead.

 

Yeah, dead.

 

Good deal.

 

I must admit I’m puzzled.

 

Not that I was expecting the big white light or st. Peter at the golden gates, but I believed that the death was- How can I say it- more definitive.

 

For sure I wasn’t expecting to be still here and asking myself: what now?

 

At least it stopped to hurt now.

 

Before everything has finished, before this unreal quiet, the pain had reached unbearable levels. 

Before the final hit, i guess I’ve been gravely  injured everywhere it could hurt without making me die.

 

Damn psychopathic clown.

 

Damn circus that attracted the attention of this psycho clown.

 

Damn corpses without head of the circus’ clowns and damn the heads without body and the circus’ tamers.

 

Damn Waine’s british butler and damn me for having believed that british butlers could go around beheading people.

 

Butlers don’t behead people. Psycho maniac clowns do it.

 

Even Kids know that. Who has ever seen a child having a panic attack in front of a butler, british no less.

 

Maybe if -like me- they have met him for the first time covered in Thomas Wayne’s blood, perhaps they would have felt some chill along their spines, but in hindsight I must admit that madmen like Joe Chill and psycho clowns like this Joker are for sure in an higher position in the top charts  of potential decapitators.

 

if only Joe Chill’s corpse wasn’t found, also without its head, a few days after the aggression of the Waynes, the resolution of the case about the Thomas Wayne’s death, and the Martha and Bruce’s wounding, would have been a piece of cake.

A double edged axe was the cause of all the wounds, mortals and not ,and on that axe, other than the Wayne’s blood and of the other unfortunates, there were only Joe Chill’s fingerprints.

 

Mr. Pennyworth, not yet Wayne’s butler, had done all the things in the right way. He called 911, and helped the wounded the best he could. He couldn’t save Thomas Wayne, but thanks to him Martha and Bruce survived.

 

To the doctors that congratulated to him, he answered he practiced at the front. He didn’t specify which one, but one is worth the other.

 

While i was doing my ordinary interrogatory, he said to me he didn’t see the man, but only the double edge axe and the corpses on the ground.

 

He was suffering because he couldn’t be able to save Mr. Wayne and he affirmed the last words of Thomas have been: “ save Martha and Bruce… protect them.”

 

Two weeks later, already their butler, he took home Bruce and after two more, Martha.

 

Between the two discharges, Joe Chill’s body without head was being rediscovered in the river. The head more upstream, stuck in a recess of a pillar of the train station bridge. 

 

A clean cut, almost surgical.

 

For the medical examiner, a single horizontal hit , from left to right. Compared to the mess made with the double edged axe, this one could be defined as refined, almost elegant.

 

Elegant and refined, like an ex major of the british S.A.S., that has reinvented himself as a butler, and with a status of service with a lot of omissis that screamed “find and destroy” from all the churches’ bell tower of Gotham.

 

I am aware that as evidence it was weak, but in my defense I can say Pennyworth has a blade in his walking stick. He also lent it to me to have it analized. Obviously there wasn’t anything on it, it’s enough to look at how he polish the silver. Pompous bastard.

 

Is it normal it started hurting again?

 

Ok, pain is too big as a word. It is more like a distant feeling, like the memory of the itch at a hand that you don’t have anymore. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself.

 

Right in the middle of the chest, where the blade of that bastard clown has  severed the aorta.

 

Yeah, I admit it, the first i saw the clown, the Joker, I thought it was Pennyworth, but this is because I’m hard headed person, and because under that thick makeup it could have been anybody, and because the victims were three clowns of a kids television show found beheaded in their dressing room. 

We’re still searching their heads.

 

The time after that he burnt a circus and kidnapped the trapeze artists, John and Mary Grayson. Unfortunately that time we have found the heads. 

In two hat boxes. 

Left under the portico of my house.

 

The CSI hadn’t finished to do the survey yet that Barbara was already loading the luggage and the kids on the car, ready to put as much road as possible between herself and Gotham.

 

She stopped only two days later, when she reached the less violent town in north America. It is over the border and there is cold as fuck three hundred days per year, and the kids already say “sorry” as every good Canadian.

 

I couldn’t live there for, like, five minutes without getting crazy for the boredom.

 

Well, the death isn’t so funny either.

 

I’m sorry only because they have to come back for my funeral. With that maniac psycho still free nobody is safe here in Gotham.

 

I hope he will be satisfied to have killed me and will forget about my family.

 

He has never tried to come close to Richard Grayson after he killed his parents.

 

Poor kid. I hope staying with the Waynes will help him getting through all of this.

I really wanted, for him and all the other families of the victims, to take that psycho head cutter with me, but neither a full magazine has been enough.

 

What kind of armour must he have under the double-breasted coat. And what a cheeky luck. I must have aimed at the head at least half of the times. it’s impossible I missed him all the damned times. I was a fucking sniper in the Marines. My status of service has almost the same number of omissis as Pennyworth and it would scream from the churches’ bell tower “ search and destroy” too, if it wouldn’t be classified.

 

It isn’t a coincidence if I immediately understood who Pennyworth was. It needs one to recognise another.

 

I’m sure at our first encounter Pennyworth calculated how much moves he could need to take me down, and I know it because I’ve done the same.

 

I will never get the chance to ask him.

 

…

 

I almost imagine him as he answer with his pompous british nonchalance

 

…

 

One less than you, Sir.

 

…

 

One less

 

…

 

…

 

O god the pain. It is intolerable; piercing.

 

I feel every single wound like it was just made.

 

If I had enough breath to cry I would never stop, but I have my lungs collapsed and a single breath is an inhuman effort.

 

But I’m breathing. 

The heart is beating.

 

Why is it beating? I’ve my aorta cut off. I should have  bled out already. It shouldn’t flow a single drop of blood, but it does. It flows at the point that I can hear it whistle in my ears.

What the hell is happening?

 

I see red. Only red, but I see. I’d try to beat my eyelid, but I couldn’t bear other pain.

 

Blood on the glasses’ lens.

 

At least it explains the red color. Not everything is as mad as it seems.

 

Yeah. It is.

It is. 

Otherwise how can I explain to myself the damn clown and Pennyworth sword fighting practically all over my carcass?

 

And why is Pennyworth wearing a kilt?

 

I’ve never seen two people fighting so hard. They’re using their sword like hammers. Every bump make sparks raining around, you wouldn’t see so much neither in an foundry. If there was gasoline on the ground,  we would be on fire.

 

The clown improvises. Pennyworth handles the sword like he didn’t  do anything else all his life, which he probably did.

 

The clown sneers. It is constant sneer. It stands above the noise of the swords that are clashing  against each others. 

Pennyworth doesn’t make a noise.

 

I could look biased, but my money goes on the butler . All of it. Included the money for the pension fund and that for the kids’ college.

 

And  what does “ there can be only one” should fucking mean? 

The clown doesn’t do anything but repeat it between a sneer an another.

 

It seems like he is shouting  “Merry christmas.”

 

If I could be able to move, I would plug my ears. I can’t bear the sound of that damn voice anymore.

And then, in a moment, everything is finished. 

The clown does zig, instead of zag and Pennyworth’s sword meets his neck, where it sticks together with the shoulders. It sinks from the left and comes out of the right, without slowing down, like there isn’t a spine in the middle that has to be severed.

 

I see Pennyworth grabbing the head of the clown and holding it up, while the rest of the body falls like an empty bag.

 

Pennyworth doesn’t talk yet. He doesn’t move. He breathes slowly. He doesn’t let out a single emotion.

 

Then it starts. The air charges of energy and suddenly it seems to be standing between  the tesla coiles , but without the tesla coiles.

 

I see lightnings go through Pennyworth, he shouts and falls on his knees.

 

I see them go through me, and I would cry if Icould be able to.

 

Hundreds Images, sounds, feelings.

 

All is so intense, and  chaotic, and incredible. I couldn’t describe what is happening. I’m happy Idon’t have to do it.

 

Maybe Pennyworth knows it. Maybe, if this isn’t a nightmare, I will ask it to him.

 

But right now, if I’m not dying again, I guess I’m going to faint

 

[day 0]


	2. Chapter 2

 

[DAY 0]

 

[Dick’s]

 

This mansion is a maze. I don’t know how many corridors I’ve already gotten through and how many rooms I’ve already opened.

What’s the point of all these rooms?

To sleep in a different one every  night?

To accomodate the whole Gotham’s symphonic orchestra?

To play hide ‘n seek with the butler?

Bruce, Mrs Martha and I are in the east wing at the second floor. A very little part of the second floor of the east wing.

If my room wouldn’t be in front of Bruce’s one, right at the end of the corridor, I wouldn’t be able to find it every evening. It’s so huge I could park our caravan and the SUV that drags it and have still some space to spare.

I must ask Bruce, or Alfred, where is the caravan. They said it’s here somewhere, but with the circus I’ve seen whole cities smaller than what they define “somewhere”.

Downstairs, still in the east wing, there’s a part we use, like the kitchen, the living room, Bruce’s gym, the library where we do our homework and the studies of Mrs Martha  and of the poor Mr Thomas, and another, huge, that perhaps it’s used once a year.

In the Formal Dining Room, behind the main entrance, we could build the big top. Not all of three rings, but the main one and the gallery for sure.

Sometimes I stand in the corner and I imagine dad, mom and I vaulting between the chandeliers like they are our trapezes. I always end up crying, but Mrs Martha  and the shrink say it’s ok to cry.

Bruce says he doesn’t go in his dad’s study to avoid crying, and more than three years have passed for him.

The third floor is empty. I guess it’s never been used, that make it useless.

To explore the fourth one a GPS is needed. It’s like a storage room where they keep anything they could need at the floors below.

I was sure Alfred’s room was somewhere at the forth floor, but now I believe only ghosts live here. Maybe our madame Valeska could be able to summon them.

Bruce continues saying me to search behind the painting, but which one?  There are hundreds of them here, and I’ve not explored the west wing yet.

“ You will never become a policeman if you can’t even find Alfred’s room..”

Gne,gne,gne.

As if it wasn’t him who decided I’d be a cop when I grew up. Not a common cop, but detective before my thirties, captain by the forties and police chief by the fifties.

When I said him it’s the mayor that hires the police chief, he winked at me and said: who do you think will be Gotham’s mayor by that time?

Bruce is made that way.

Alfred told me that when the doctors told him he’d never be able to walk again, he asked for a laptop and in that same moment he started doing researches for exoskeletal prosthetics.

At the moment he’s doing researches about a chip that, his own words, reconnets the above with the below without the need of exoskeletons.

Instead Mrs Martha said when they woke her up Bruce had already hired Alfred, fired Wayne industries’ head of research and development and promoted  Lucius Fox to that place.

I met Lucius Fox. He’s good. Not like Bruce, but nobody’s like Bruce.

To get the consent from him to take part to the psychological therapy, Mrs Martha had to negotiate for days and in the end had to threat him not to allow  him to graduate at 12, and sign up at the Gotham university’s cibernetic faculty.

“Thomas had big dreams for Gotham” told me Mrs M. a morning at breakfast, “But Bruce will be the one who will make them come true, even if he had to bulldoze it to the ground and build it from scratch in order to succeed.”

I don’t have difficulties to believe it.

 

Alfred’s room isn’t where i’ve searched it until now, so where could it be?

Bruce left the mansion’s plans for me in front of my room door. If only I’d be able to read it.

Bruce knows I can’t sleep yet and every evening he challenges me. This one about Alfred’s room goes on since last week, but I agree with him that it’s better sleepless wandering the halls than frazzled ‘cause of the medicines.

Dad said it so too: an acrobat who gets high is a dead acrobat, especially when he is vaulting at six metres from the ground and there’s no net under him.

I don’t think I’ll perform any time soon, but with bad habits is better not start either.

I hear a noise behind the wall of the hallway, where the stair of the ground floor and Bruce’s elevator column  arrive, right where there’s the full-length painting of the great-great Wayne grandfather this or that name who has done this or that big thing for Gotham.

Or the mices of this mansion ride bikes, or those are Bruce’s prosthetics.

At the circus we had battery powered forklifts that made the same noise. He and Lucius have still to work on it  for a long time.

I come close to the painting and I push the frame.

Click and the painting starts turning on his central axle, revealing an area of the house totally new to explore and Bruce, who looks at me like he’s been waiting me for hours.

Bruce always looks at everybody and everything like they are too slow and they’re making him waste time.

“I hope your plan wasn’t sneaking up on me.”

He shrug and makes sign to follow him.

“So it’s here that?” I ask.

“Yes. at the floor below, but right now we don’t have time. We must go…”

“Go where?”

“I will explain it to you while we go.”

I let the painting close behind my back and come up beside Bruce.

I always try not to walk faster than him when he uses the prosthetics.

When he is on the wheelchair there’s no problem. I guess  he wouldn’t be out of place running it at the Paralympics.

“I didn’t know there was a servants area. Keeping Alfred here is a bit snobbish.”

“Are you kidding? When I hired him I offered him your bedroom. And then all the others between mine and mom’s one. He insisted for the butler’s bedroom… and it is a regular flat. The last butler before Alfred lived there with a wife and three sons. But it was before my birth, or maybe before my dad had turned back from Iraq and had married mom”.

“Your dad went to Iraq?’

“Yup. Army medic.”

“Wow!”

We get in on what should be, for logic, a service elevator and we emerge in a kitchen that isn’t the one where we have breakfast in the morning.

This is huge. In disuse, but huge.

Bruce stares at me and laughs.

“Yes. I thought about making  the mansion a luxury hotel.”

“And?”

“It tempts me, but it isn’t the moment yet. It will be a lot of other things before. You and I will be a lot of other things before.”

I love knowing that, from our first encounter, I’m always part of every Bruce’s plans .

“Where are we going?”

“Garage”

“Can we get there from here?”

“Dick, this is Wayne Mansion. You can get everywhere from anywhere. I haven’t found it yet , but it is said  there is a tunnel that, from here, it reaches the Wayne Tower in the city centre”.

“I’m surprised…”

“ That there is a tunnel?”

“ No, that you haven’t found it yet”

“I had other things to do”.

“Like what?”

“Like the exoskeleton, the chip, the car with all the controls at the steering wheel.”

“ You’re 14.”

“and so?”

“You can’t drive at 14.”

“You drive and you’re 11”

“It’s different. At the circus there’s no kid older than 10 who doesn’t know how to drive”.

“Good, because the car won’t be ready until next month, and we must go out. Right now.”

In the garage Bruce looks all around him.

“Manual or automatic gear shift?” he asks me and without waiting an answer he throws me the key.

“Do you really want me to drive?”

“I believed giving you the keys was a clue good enough.”

“ Where do we have to go? And in addition I can’t go out like this. I’m in pijama”.

“Thank goodness. I feared you would go on with the issue of the age. And what should I say, I’m in boxer and a shirt”.

“Yeah, Why are you only wearing boxers if you already knew you gotta go out?”

“ Trousers too tight for the prosthetics limbs”

“ You could have wore the ones you use for the gym. We can both fit into those at the same time.”

“Excellent observation, lil bro. It’s always these little details that elude me.”

While I start the Mercedes he chose and he sits, busy with his prosthetics for how much he can, I suddenly realize that he called me lil bro and I smile. I do it not much since dad and mom died, but those little times are thanks to Bruce.

“So, where are we going?”

“I don’t know, yet. Take care of remaining on the road and under the speed limits. I teach the onboard computer how to take us to Alfred’s car”.

And like this we go out, for sure to get into troubles.

 

I drive the car like it is on the rails, and Bruce is an excellent GPS. If the traffic cops don’t stop us, we could even think to get away with this.

“Why are we going to Alfred?” I ask , eyes fixed on the road in front of me, adrenaline as high as before to let go of the trapeze and vault towards dad’s hands.

“His car is stationary, in the same place, for too long.”

“Maybe he has a  gallant date.”

“Alfred doesn’t go out wearing the Macleod’s tartan to see women.”

“is Alfred scottish?”

“Nah… Alfred is more british than the Big Ben.”

“And  so what?”

“Hold the eyes on the road, Dick”.

I obey.

“I’m going to reveal you a thing about Alfred, but it must remain a secret. You have to promise.”

“I promise”.

“Alfred is more than 200 years old, and he’s immortal”.

I swerve.

“ what the actually bloody…” I shout out, and i’m going to add ‘crap are you saying’, but i stop when Bruce make me sign to not interrupt him.

“ I believe he was a british army official during the Crimea war. He was killed during a battle, but then he woke up and from there he didn’t get old anymore. and has never died anymore.”

“You can’t be saying it seriously.”

“I swear on my life that, by the way, I owe him.”

Meanwhile we went in the city borders of Gotham. Here, if it goes bad, we meet the traffic cops and the performance goes down the toilet, but who cares. all of this is so crazy that it can’t be no true.

“While Alfred was in Africa, in the  foreign legion, he met Siobhan Macleod, third of her clan revealing to be immortal, and about 100 years older than him. She’d been his mentor and with the blessing of the other Macleods, she adopted him in the clan”.

“Adopted?”.

“Well, you can’t wear a kilt and say: I’m Alfred Pennyworth of the Macleod clan. It seems like the Macleod are a sort of police patrol for the immortals. Siobhan wanted a time out and Alfred took her place.”

“Alfred told you all this?”

“All this?” Bruce chokes a grim. “Our Alfred ...ah… if you don’t ask him directly, Alfred wouldn’t   tell you the time of the day. I found it out and he confirmed. And believe me, You must dig very deep to find news about the immortals. it took less time to find vampires and werewolves.”

“Vampires,” I grin.

“Yep.”

“And werewolves.”

“Yep”

And why not. If immortals exist, why shouldn’t exist vampires and werewolves.

“Olympians? Gods of Asgard?”

“I can’t prove it yet, but at the moment I can’t exclude it neither.”

And now the 64000 dollars question.

“How did a 200 years old immortal become our butler?”

“Because of Joe Chill.”

The murderer of his father, and the responsible of his paraplegia, too.

“He was one of them. Alfred had been on his footsteps  for few weeks when Chill attacked us. That is illogic. Immortals usually play between themselves  and no one of us three was, or could become immortal.”

“ How do you know it?”

“Because dad is dead, I carry on growing and mom gets old. But we got attacked like we were immortals too.”

“Meaning what?”

“Joe Chill tried to detach the head from the neck to us all.  The beheading is the only way to kill definitely an immortal, based on what Alfred says.”

Here it is, the connection that binds us all; a british immortal, the richest family of Gotham, the one of a circus trapeze artists, a madman with an axe and a fake clown.

“The Joker…” I don’t ask. I afferm.

Bruce nods.

“Alfred is convinced the Joker is an immortal gone berserk. For this he put on the war paint and went out to search him.”

“And Joe Chill? Alfred beheaded Joe Chill?”

Bruce nods again. Lieutenant Gordon wasn’t wrong suspetting Alfred.

“We’re here for this, Dick. It mustn't repeat  what happened with Joe Chill. If Alfred will get rid of Joker, his corpse mustn’t reappear some days later. This time I want be sure everything goes smooth.”

“Alfred will get rid of the Joker…” I repeat, more too myself than to Bruce. I Would have wanted so much do it myself, but as a second choice, Alfred is just what the doctor ordered.

“Exactly what I thought when I’ve seen him go out  in kilt three years ago.”

Bruce says he can’t read the mind, but sometimes I doubt it.

 

Now I don’t know where we are anymore.

About the port, I guess. Smell of gasoline, and a lot of containers. too much.

A maze, and I’m getting through it with a car too long and too large.

Finding Alfred here around will be a challenge.

“ We’re almost there. Alfred’s car is a few hundreds metres from here.”

“I don’t think I’m able to drive here, Bruce. There aren’t even real roads… And if I slam against a container?”

“ who care about the car, Dick!” Bruce doesn’t have any idea how valuable is money.

“Don’t let me down right now. You’ve done good until now. Now focus and pretend it is only another trapeze… and turn right as soon as possible”.

Without touching anything, we arrive to an area between the containers, and we see Alfred appear from a lateral alley, holding an half naked man covered in blood.

“Lieutenant Gordon…” screams Bruce and he leaves me just the time necessary to stop the car near Alfred’s one, before running out at speed that allows him to mess with his prosthetic limbs. I’ve never seen him move so quickly wearing that flatirons.

Alfred seems surprised of seeing us. Very surprised. Too surprised.

I believe we’re going to find out if he screams, and how loud.

“Mr Bruce.Mr Richard. What are you doing here?”

Even worse. Not an octave above the whisper, but so full of subtexted “we’re going to talk about it later” that I’m sure the troubles we searched for have finally found us, and with firecrackers.

Bruce looks like he doesn’t care.

Alfred’s gaze could freeze the blood of the lion tamers of our circus. Bruce’s one, in answer, could freeze everything else.

Must be beautiful the snow on the equator In this period of the year.

I’m happy I have been forgotten, here around, I limit myself to the role of accomplice.

When Bruce asks me to open the Mercedes’ trunk, take the cover and lay it on the back seats, i do it as fast as possible, and just as quickly I get out of the way when Alfred puts lieutenant Gordon on the backseats  and makes sure he’s belted.

“What happened to Jim?” Bruce continues shaking his head. The presence, and the conditions of lieutenant Gordon seem to have disturbed him, and have upset him. And then he called him Jim. I believe I’ve never heard Bruce call him like this. I know too little, Or better still, I don’t know anything.

“The Joker. He found him before I did.”

“Luckily you have arrived in time.”

I see Bruce passing his hand on the wound in the middle of the lieutenant’s chest, and turn over towards Alfred.

“You didn’t arrive in time”

“Unfortunately no.”

“Then how?”

Bruce and Alfred can talk with each other for hours without saying a single word. They’re doing it right now, too.

I stare at one and then at the other. It seems a tennis game. Eyebrow millimetres  fractions against eyebrow millimetres fractions.

I see the moment where Bruce understands, and the one where Alfred confirms. Yeah, but what? I stare at the wounds of the lieutenant. I stare at the one in the chest. How is he still alive with a wound like that.

I think about what Bruce told me about Alfred, that he died and then he awoke, and he never got old again, and he never died again.

“Oh…” is everything I’m able to say.

“Yeah…” nods Bruce and then addressing to Alfred:”Are you sure?”

“Did I explain to you of how we feel each other?”

If Bruce nods he does it with the mind, but for Alfred it is enough.

“Until yesterday I’ve never felt anything from the lieutenant. Now is like  Jimmy Hendricks’ electric guitar at Woodstock happening... And yes”, he adds while watching me: “ I was there, Mr Richard.”

Another mind reader.

“What do we do now?”

Who asked?  Was it me? Really? I believed I disconnected minutes ago for an excess load of information.

“You and I take the lieutenant to Wayne Mansion.  Alfred arranges of the Joker and then he joins us.”

Bruce is a force of nature. Alfred doesn’t even try to object that we are only two kids and that we have to drive to Wayne Mansion , plus with lieutenant Gordon in these conditions on the backseats.

I settle in the control again. Bruce mess up with the prosthetic limbs until he gets on.

“Alfred. In the truck there’s a bag with a change of clothes, a gurney, the instructions to go to the Wayne Tower’s  furnace and the codes to bypass the alarms. See ya at home.”

“See you at home, misters. Be careful.”

We wait for Alfred to close the truck and we direct to home.

I have so much adrenaline in my body I won’t sleep for at least three days , and I have forgotten to thank Alfred for the Joker. I will do it tomorrow.

“I must tell Lucius to Speed up for the new model. This exoskeleton is a heap.”

“Maybe you exaggerated.”

“Nah… It has been a good trial. A lot of facts to analize to improve the next one…”

“I guessed my acrobatics were necessary to improve the next model”

“They too, but a lot of it goes at the study of the chip”.

In the backseats the lieutenant groans, scaring us, and then he mumbles: “Bruce, Who’s driving, you?”

“ Absolutely no, uncle Jim”

The lieutenant dozes off again, with a trace of a smile under the mustache.

Bruce stares at me and giggles.

For the first time from the dad and mum’s murder, I laugh and with gusto..

  
  
  


 

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

 

[ DAY 4]

[Jim’s]

 

The laugh of that damned clown is drilling my brain.

 

I strip the clotted blood from my skin and I hear him sneering of every wound he inflicted.

 

It’s so loud it’s above the noise of the water, in the shower, that flows over my body,  steaming hot.

 

If I close my eyes I see his face projected on my eyelids. He sneers. He sneers and sinks his knife again, and again, and again.

 

He stops and licks the blade, And then he starts again stabbing.

 

How many stabs did he inflicted me before finishing me off?

 

Except the scar on the chest, that looks like it’s here to stay and it’s livid, the others can hardly be seen, but I could indicate them all, one by one.

 

I should ask myself why they seem to go away with the blood that covered them, but it’d be like asking why I’m alive when I should be dead. Too much to face right now, especially with that damned clown who continues to squawk  in my head.

 

Why me?

 

Alright. I was searching for him, but among all the others I was the one who kept the lowest profile. No interview. No declaration, but “no comment.”

 

What, about me, attracted his attention?

 

Why there were the Grayson’s heads under my portico?

 

Why torture me for hours when he could have ended  me in a few minutes?

 

How did he have the time to slaughter me?

 

Where were the reinforcement?

 

Oh… no reinforcement… bad. Too bad.

 

I get out of the shower. I can barely stand on my legs. If I do only another step, I’ll trow up.

 

Without the shower breaking the silence, the laugh of that damn psycho is much higher and vulgar. It reminds me of the monkeys that Babs, JImmy and I saw at the zoo, but all of them together don’t do the mess that he does, alone.

 

I want to switch it off, at least for one second.

 

Burn in hell, damn bastard.

 

I should shave, but I don’t want to see my face in the mirror.

 

I limit myself to taking the glasses from the sink and put them on while I go out from the bathroom and I ask myself where I am.

 

It’s not my house, if it still exists.

 

Too much luxury to be an hotel that I would choose to go away.

 

I stare through the window. Trees. A park with a lot of flowerbeds. The Wayne Mansion. Ground floor. I must be Pennyworth’s guest.

 

On the bed, tied up while I was having a shower, a pair of boxers, a t-shirt, and a Marines gym suit. They look like the ones I have in my closet, but all of them have the price tag.

 

I shiver at the idea that someone, maybe the clown, was nuzzling in my stuff.

 

I feel like an idiot.

 

I’ve been stabbed fifty-three times and I feel violated by a hand nuzzling in my panties drawer.

 

Maybe he did it. Maybe after he left the Grayson’s heads under my portico. Maybe while he was waiting for me and was drawing on the walls with the spray paint. Maybe right when I was entering, before escaping and making me chase him in that damn maze of containers.

 

I’ll have to change house. Burn all the furniture... and all the clothes.

 

I don’t know if I could feel safe in that house. I don’t know if I could feel safe in any other house anymore. I don’t know If I will ever feel safe anymore.

 

I can’t stop thinking they left me die alone, in a perfect Gotham way.

 

Meanwhile the clown laughs.

 

He laughs and shows me white  silhouettes, among millions of white silhouettes, and points at another and he simply says “Him.”

 

For the clown, every man, woman, and kid he sees aren’t anything more than boring white silhouettes. The whole world is just a white canvas until he paints it.

 

The violence makes the colors emerge from the white, the joy from the boredom.

 

This is why he uses a knife, and not a gun.

 

The gun paints spots, and the clown doesn’t like Pollock.

 

The knife is more elegant. Every stab is a brush stroke, and every brush stroke is a passage towards a reality full of colors.

 

He didn’t stab me. He painted me. He converted my flat white canvas in an explosion of colors. He didn’t finish me, he signed me like one of his  more successful masterpiece.

 

How do i know these things?

 

Maybe he talked while he was torturing me and now I’m starting to remember?

 

That doesn’t explain how, seeing myself in the mirror for a moment, I see every stab of the knife, every single scroll or rotation of the  blade, and I see the colors emerge. And they are intense like never before.

 

I’m the three cuts on the Fontana’s canvas.

 

I’m the VII composition of Kandinskij.

 

My screams are Wagner’s  Ride of the Valkyries.

 

And my boring and useless life has finally a purpose.

 

I’m a masterpiece.

 

And he laughs.

 

All he has to do is cut off the head.

 

And he laughs.

 

Never leave the head.

 

And he laughs till it hurts.

 

The research for the quickening is pleasure as the quickening itself.

 

Oh my God! It’s not only the laughter. I have the entire fucking clown in my head.

 

It’s unreal to see my death through his eyes, but what isn’t in this whole story.

  
  


I see his many murders. His many masterpieces. I hear all the screams, the tortures.

 

I sit on the bed. I gather my legs to the chest.I bend my head between my forearms and cover my ears with my hands.

 

And he laughs.

 

I let him vomit on me all his evilness, all his venom.

 

It hurts more than the cut in the chest.

 

Maybe I’ll never get up from this bed. They’ll find me like this, covered in cobwebs and catatonic from the shock of being possessed by the foulest, most atrocious, disgusting clown ever existed.

 

_ … The cray of a baby. The very first. _

 

Great lungs, my Jimmy. And what a head of red hair. Like his dad and like all the Gordon…

 

I stretch out my legs, slowly.

 

_...Do you, Barbara Kaen, take James Warthington Gordon here as your husband… _

 

I put my feet on the ground.

 

_...Uncle Jim. Do you think dad will get hangry if I call you dad, too? _

 

I get dressed.

 

What a great pair of running shoes.

 

The laces, alone, cost like the first pair I had.

 

They were sand colored and they were very comfortable. I ran anywhere with them.

 

What is happening, clown? Are you losing the grip?

 

I go out and I get myself going.

 

You’re not my first rodeo, clown. You’re not even the worst bull among the ones I’ve ridden.

 

I put the autopilot on and I let my body start running the paths of the Wayne Mansion’s park. At this pace I can go on for hours.

 

Thomas and I prepared a marathon in this park. Every morning, all mornings, from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m.

 

I was leaving for my second mission in Iraq. He was healing from a shoulder wound, and was about to get married with Martha later that year.

 

I run.

 

I’ve run through middle school and high school, college, the Marines years, the police academy.

 

I run on the track, on the road, on dirt, in the snow and in the cold of the fucking Canada.

 

I’ve run gran fondo, 100 miles. I’ve run marathons. I did Iron men.

 

You can laugh as long as you want. You can drown me in all the shit that filled your brain, but you can’t stop me when I run. And you don’t have the control anymore.

 

I don’t care about your grim artistic taste. I don’t care how you felt the first time you cut a head. I don’t care if it makes every drug pale in  comparison. 

I run till I’m exhausted, till the endorphins take control and the mind can focus on something else. I solve murders while I’m running. 

 

Did you kill, destroy, and make artworks with blood?

 

I cleared minefields in Iraq. I took part of the S.W.A.T. Chicago and Gotham.

 

Did you kill your mother when she gave birth to you?

 

I have two kids who are the best thing in my life, and maybe I will have others.

 

You were one of the kids Dickens wrote about?

 

Well, look how much I don’t give it a flying fuck. You have been only a waste of oxygen under kilos of greasepaint.

 

Carry on laughing.

 

I’ll carry on running, and thinking about Babs and Jimmy unwrapping their presents for christmas. About Barbara who left me ‘cause of you, but before she’d gone she fucked me till we hurt.

 

Hold your horrific masterpieces. All of them aren’t worth one single of my moments.

 

I’ve seen things worse than my fiftythree stabs and I saved lives everytime I could.

 

If I died, I’d have lived more than you and your madness, straight from “sociopathic for dummies,” anyway

 

I’m not dead.

 

You are.

 

I’ve felt you dying, and you were scared, like anyone else.

 

You perfectly understood the moment you lost against Pennyworth, and you were going to beg for your life when he cut your head from your neck. You were not so special, after all, and for sure you weren’t laughing.

 

I will live, and everyday will be in your face.

 

Laugh how much you want. At the end of the day is the only thing left.

 

I have a muscular memory, I have training, I have discipline.

I run, but in my mind I’m settled on a roof, with my rifle, and i’m preparing for the shot. I don’t feel the heat. I don’t feel the fatigue. Everything could hurt, but in this moment I would ignore it. In this moment I’m the sniper, my mind is the rifle and you are the target.

 

I run, but I’ve got the round in the chamber and you in my crossair.

 

With calm.

 

I have time.

 

A deep breath.

 

Another.

 

Another.

 

The rifle is the extension  of my arm. The gunsight is the eye. The trigger is the finger.

 

Calm.

 

it is all a matter of self control.

 

Calm.

 

I imagine the trajectory. I imagine the bullet going out of the rifle. I imagine  hitting you in your mouth and get out of your nape.

 

You didn’t expect it, right?

 

I feel you trying to remake yourself, and I shot again.

 

And again.

 

I’m controlling myself. I can do it as long as you want.

 

Every shot is more powerful than the previous one, and you become weaker and weaker.

 

Bang!

 

Bang!

 

Here it is.

 

The silence.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

[DAY 4]

 

[Dick’s]

From the balcony of Bruce’s room, you can reach the east surrounding wall, jumping from a tree to another tree, and without touching the ground once. Almost a kilometer walkable from branch to branch  and at the end a high wall, not insuperable  neither  to go out or come in . 

Yesterday Bruce made me try it three times. Instead today we’re studying halfway distances  and where we can arrive from each one of them.

I didn’t ask why. With Bruce it doesn’t work.

“Spider to fly. Answer fly.”

“Bruce, we must still work on these code names. They suck.”

“Duly noted. Where are you?”

“Almost at the surrounding wall. I confirm the blind spot of the camera at the gate. Getting off the last tree you can crawl along the wall without being seen.”

“This is a problem. I must tell it to Alfred, and he’ll want to know how I know it. After the other night he isn’t  so well disposed towards us.”

“ Make Lucius tell it, or tell it to Mrs Martha and let her take care of it.”

“Good ideas. Both of them. Other things to communicate?”

“Did you know Alfred practices in an open space here at the end of the park?”

Bruce remains quite. what did I say?

“Bruce. Are you there?”

“yeah.Yeah, I am here. I knew about the training, but at this time of day he has already finished long ago. He usually uses the gym in the dependance. The one beside the swimming pools”.

“ Today is here.”

“Details…”

“A moment, I’m trying to get closer.”

I climb down the tree, I crawl along the wall till I reach the bushes and I hide under them.

It’s not a great hiding place, but is enough.

“So, Bruce. Green olive tank top and boxer black shorts. Jock strap. Green like the tank top. Do you think he wears it even under the suit?”

“Dick, for how much I care he can go commando. Focus on what is important. What is he doing?”

“Give or take, I’d say he’s doing one of the most difficult Kata that I’ve ever seen, and in  the circus I’ve seen a lot of them.

I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of those punches, and now he starts again the sequence. Bruce, it’s exact at the millimeter.”

“He must still be agitated from the other night.”

Until now the first law about the other night is that nobody talks about the other night.

The only one who tried was me, but even my attempt of thanking Alfred for having eliminated the Joker has produced only a tense nod from him.

And in the while Alfred repeats again, and again the Kata.

If I squeeze my eyes I can almost see the imaginary enemy he’s beating up. I guess I don’t need Madame Valeska to recognize it. I bet he is wearing purple and a lot of make up.

At the fifth or sixth repetition I see the first ripple on the sequence, just a small beat out of time.

Istinctively I turn around. Bullseye.

“Bruce. lieutenant Gordon is here, too”

“Details.”

“ Marines’ gymsuit and the running shoes you made arrive yesterday. Concerned expression.

If I’d have him as porteur I’d give up the jump.”

“What is he doing?”

“He’s running. Long distance, not sprint.”

I almost hear the noise of Bruce’s  thoughts through the phone.

“Bruce?”

“I’m thinking.”

“ I got it. What are you thinking?”

“Alfred is exhausting himself using the Kata. Uncle Jim using the running. It can’t be a coincidence.”

I leave Bruce pending. I wait that the lieutenant passes again. Bingo.

“It’s not a coincidence, Bruce. Alfred’s Kata is always a beat out at the passage of the lieutenant.”

“Good. Now look what happens to Uncle Jim.”

Never a moment of boredom with Bruce.

“Bruce. Why you call him uncle Jim?

“He and dad were friends from the times of Iraq. They were the best men to each other’s the marriage.”

Nice.

“Can I  be your best man?”

“I don’t see why not, but I think I’ll be it first at your marriage. This , except in the case we don’t end up marrying each other, in that case both of us would have to find a second choice … or if both get married the same day  with a shared ceremony. Or if one of us get married at the other side of the world and the other couldn’t reach him. There’s Las Vegas, too. I see you getting married in Las Vegas, like this, out of the blue… In that case I don’t know if I could be there in time…”

“Bruce…”

“Anyway I don’t see any reason to not be the best…”

“Bruce!”

“Tell me.”

“the lieutenant lost a beat, too. I’m not able to see them at the same time, but I bet that it happens at the same time.

“They feel each other.”

““This was not already established the other night?”

“I don’t know. there are still too many variables.”

“there’s another one, Bruce. The lieutenant stopped. And Alfred, too.”

“What are they doing now?”

“The lieutenant nods. Alfred smiles. Both of them seem more relaxed. In the case of the lieutenant a lot more relaxed. What do you think?”

“There’s study for generations”

“ We don’t lack of the raw material.”

“Ok. I’ coming i…”

Suddenly silence.

“Dick. Mom is telling me the breakfast is ready…”

“But Alfred is here… Does Mrs Martha cook?”

“Don’t be snob, Dick. Of course she does, we’re in the twenty first century. During the college years she had to eat.”

“Right.”

“Ah… she says to use the path and not the trees.”

Gasp!

“And since you’re already there, invite those two gentlemen who are finally using the park for what it was designated for.”

“ In a understandable english?”

“ Tell Jim and Alfred that mom is waiting them for breakfast… Dick, with mom the “No, Thanks” isn’t contemplated.

  
  
  


Breakfast at the circus meant  milk warmed in the microwave and cereals before starting the training. More and you got stuck with the trapezes.

Here, at the Wayne Mansion it’s already huge in normal days, but it becomes a wedding banquet in special occasions.

Today seems a special occasion.

I already smell the perfume from the entrance of the interior garden and more I go on through the flowerbeds, more the scents are distinguished, above them all the one of sausages and bacon.

Bruce is doing stunts around the table of the patio, with the wheelchair, to set up the table while Mrs Martha , wearing a pinny that say “ Yes. I’m rich and I can cook”, sets up a trolley that wouldn’t look bad in a restaurant.

Milk and cereals are included but they’re stored in the corner. Coffee, tea and fruit juice, Bundt cake, croissants and jam, Alfred’s  typical breakfast “bite and run” are present too, but the leading role is played by the eggs, scrambled, boiled and soft-boiled, the sausages, the bacon, the toasted bread, the cooked ham, the apple pie and the cheese cake with wild berries.

If I tasted everything, it would take me days to dispose of it. Dad would make me run around the big tent till every single calorie went burnt. And no trapeze for weeks.

I arrive just in time to hear Bruce asking Mrs Martha if she invited the full Bene Gesserit’s Gild for breakfast. I don’t know what it means, but  Mrs Martha smiles and messes up Bruce’s hair; thing that he hates and lets nobody, but her, do.

When Mrs Martha smiles, she seems mom.

I miss mom. And dad, too. All of this still looks like so absurd that, sometimes, I hope to wake up and find out this is only a dream. Then I really wake up and there’s nothing left than to settle for the idea that the corpse and the head of the Joker has been burned in an incinerator.

It’s not enough.

I greet the Waynes and I go to wash my hands. I don’t even need to go in. There’s a sink beside the barbeque and so much wipes to dry the hands of an army.

Wayne Mansion must have been a party place , before Joe Chill.

“Our soldiers?” whispers Mrs Martha.

Mrs Martha got wounded at the vocal cords during the aggression, and even if the reconstruction succeed, she doesn’t force her voice and never use four words if three are enough.

She speaks slowly and whispers. Since I am here I didn’t hear her speak up once, even if Bruce swears she is still able to do it.

Bruce says before, she loved singing, and she was good. After the last reconstruction surgery, the speech therapist tried to convince her to do it again, as exercise, but there was no Way to convince her.

For Bruce that and the not hiding the scar, are  her way to continue Mr Wayne’s mourn.

In addition, Bruce cares a lot  to underline it, Mrs Martha is the richest , and the most powerful woman in Gotham city. It’s not her who has to speak up, are the others who must pay attention and listen. And the whole Gotham knows it.

“They were behind me.” I answer while I sit down, as usual, beside Bruce. I turn around and I see them arriving.

Alfred is wearing the long trousers of the gym suit. lieutenant Gordon is using the hoodie to dry off the sweat.

Marines T-shirt and the british army tank top. The attitude is almost the same. Exactly two soldiers.

They don’t talk and both stare in our direction. they’re close enough to to graze their forearms, and both have the same half smile under the mustaches.

Alfred is the usual Alfred, but the lieutenant seems a lot more relaxed. Now I believe I would make him catch  me from the trapeze.

I’m going to say it to Bruce, but he shakes his head and winks.  

“Gentlemen, please take your seat”. Mrs Martha smiles. “We were waiting for you.”

The lieutenant nods. Alfred stiffens.

“I’m desolated, madame . I’ve lost the track of time…”

Mrs Martha makes  a gesture that seems to say “don’t mention it’” but since it had no effect, she shakes her head. Talking hurts and, for how much she tries to hide it, you can see it.

“It’s fine, Alfred...sit down and have breakfast with us.”

He’s stuck. For the effort made by Mrs. Wayne, Alfred is obliged to accept the invite, while he’d like to be in his flat changing clothes.

“At least, let me serve, please…”

“If you want... to do it so much…” she ends, resigned, while she sits down.

Alfred serves the coffee wearing his gym suit, lieutenant Gordon bites a croissant and Bruce studies everything and everyone with real focus. I feel like a spectator to a movie I don’t know plot.

I hope it’s not a horror.

“I wanted to talk with you two…”

And with us, or we wouldn’t be here with the adults. Maybe Bruce is right. I can become a detective, after all.

“The kiddos found some flaw in our security sistem.”

Yeah, but we didn’t say it yet. Maybe it was Bruce who said it while I was coming, but he seems surprised, too.

“you…” and she speaks to Alfred and the lieutenant like one single being.

Our ringmaster did it too with us. We were never John, Mary or Dick, but always “You Grayson”.

“I trust you. I would like you to take care of it…”

Alfred, still a little uncomfortable to be sitting at the table with us, nods and hides himself behind is cup of tea.

“Martha, I don’t know your security system.” lieutenant Gordon mentions, while he sweeps away the scraps off his mustache. The impression is that him too is a little uncomfortable .

As Bruce, Mrs Martha projects an image capable of intimidation.

I wonder how Mr Thomas was to stand up to two forces of nature like them.

Alfred and the lieutenant  look like they won’t even try.

Mrs Martha passes her hand on her waist and from under her jacket she pulls out a gun, and she places it on the table, between the astonishment of everybody.

Even Bruce has a start before assuming again what I call his imperturbable face.

Maybe the one who hides best  the astonishment is me, but I throw myself  from trapezes to live.

“I walk armed in my house”, she murmurs.”I don’t want to walk armed in my house…”

Pause. Maybe it’s for the pain at the vocal cords too, but the pauses of Mrs.  Wayne are never at the wrong moment.

“I want to entrust you the task of making us feel safe at least here.”

Another pause.

Like the ring master said, half of the show is in the presentation. I guess he and the madame Wayne would have understood each other on the fly.

“If you’ll have to destroy the system and build it up from scratch, do it.”

Bruce and I look at each other and he nods. I think our Turin in the carousel has come.

“No more opened doors not detected by the system, no more unused cars with hundred miles in addition on the milometer.”

Ahia!

madame Wayne looks at me and Bruce, looks at Jim and Alfred, looks again at us and smile a little.

Bruce answers her with the same smile.

They agreed and for how it looks, it’s enough. I’ll ask Bruce to explain me this moment, but later.

Bruce makes a gesture that could mean All Ok, or Run If You Want To Stay Alive, but he doesn’t move and, as always, I imitate him.

“Jim. I’d like you, Barbara and the kids to move in the caretaker’s house.”

Bruce showed me the “Caretaker’s house”. It’s at the main entrance and it’s huge. Downstairs there are the electronic equipment and a sort of barracks . At first floor there’s  the real Caretaker’s apartment and it could harbor half of the circus.

And there are no porticos where abandon  hat boxes with the severed heads of mum and dad.

Both Bruce and mrs. wayne touch my hand when thinking about it, makes a tear comes down my face.

The lieutenant nods, meaning that he understands too about what i’m thinking. He wouldn’t mind to be consoled  too in this moment. Both of us lost so much.

Alfred decides that is the right moment to serve another cup of coffee and while doing it, he clearly places a hand on the lieutenant’s  shoulder and leaves it there, just the time necessary to make him understand that it’s a wanted gesture. The lieutenant appreciate, and you ca see it. With those mustaches he can’t hide anything. Or maybe we are very good at understanding, cause neither me, or Bruce or mrs. Martha misses  the detail of that small gesture.

“And Jim, I’d like you to coordinate with Alfred to have at least one of you on the perimeter every night.”

“Madame, If it’s for the other night, I’m sorry again…”

“Don’t be silly, Alfred. Is one of your rights to take time for yourself sometimes. Is that, taking for granted your presence with us, I panicked not finding you…”

How much does actually know Mrs Martha, of the other night?

For what Bruce says she shouldn’t know anything, but?

lieutenant Gordon nods, but it seems that he doesn’t have any idea of what is happening around him.

“I don’t know. Policemen can’t have two jobs…”

“In Gotham?” Mrs. Wayne would like to laugh, but stops herself only for the little pain at the throat.

“Alfred, get informations if policeman can be caretakers. If they can’t, find another solution that satisfy the bureaucracy.”

“It will be done as soon as possible, madame.” He nods , with his usual military behavior, our butler.

I’m still thinking about how we did get away with it, since  it looks like Mrs Martha knows nothing about what Bruce and I did the other night, I find myself sharing the same confusion that I read on the lieutenant Gordon’s face .

Then I realize. The Wayne family, or what is left, collects strays, as the orphan, victim of a tragedy similar at theirs, or the poor lieutenant who lost everything, literally, trying to resolve both of the tragedies.

We are one big support group for victims of immortal psychos who go around beheading people. And we have one, or rather two, immortals on our perimeter and by our side.

“Jim. I’d really appreciate it,” pulls, but with grace Mrs Martha, and lieutenant Gordon finds himself nodding at the proposal that, in fac, makes him and his family part of this family.

Bruce bites his lip to not  laugh, or shout or I don’t know, but I guess for him Santa Claus have arrived really early this year.


	5. Chapter 5

[jim’s]

 

[Day 4]

Barbara was torn between the idea of living in a town where the most serious crime is the cold and Wayne Mansion.

For now the cold is still winning. She loves the Wayne Mansion, but she’s never liked Gotham City. When we came back years ago, she accepted, unwilling, hoping it was less violent than Chicago, that is like moving from Bikini to Mururoa ‘cause the atomic bomb, I admit it.

Martha is doing the mediator, and if everything goes fine, tomorrow I’ll go personally to Canada to take back my wife and my kids.

I only have to tell Alfred at what time I need the private jet of the Wayne Industries.

 

Alfred.

We have a lot to talk about, Alfred  and I. A lot of questions. Too many to face right now.

Alfred seems to understand it.

Since breakfast, this morning, we’re studying  the Wayne Mansion’s security system and we gravitate around each other like satellites, now me around him, and now he around me, like we know each other since forever.

Before I could even try to describe the chaos that makes me feel this absurd story about the immortality and psychopathic clowns who get inside someone’s  head even when they’re dead, Alfred stopped me saying :”You will understand when the time is right. And I will be here ready to help you as much as I can.”

And then he added:” what we aren’t short of is the time.”

After that we returned to study the security system and we agreed that the second thing to do was to demolish and build up again one piece at a time starting from the inhabited area and extending concentrically to the outside.

The first thing, already anticipated by Bruce this morning even before finishing the breakfast, is making Lucius Fox flank us and taking everything that Wayne’s research and development  can offer.

Useless negating it. I feel better. In my head I continuously  shot the clown everytime he tries to make himself heard; Alfred is only two doors from here; and tomorrow I’m going to Canada to take back home Barbara and the kids.

 

[Day 5]

I should have listened to Bruce and make me find rundown in some alley near the harbor area. Maybe even pretending an amnesia.

An amnesia from the head injury certificated from the doctors would have been an useful explanation for my days of absence. 

I didn’t realise that I was being absent 5 days, so I went back home to take some clothes to put in my bag for Canada, and half of my own squad assaulted, laid down and handcuffed me even before I could ask what was happening.

It’s happened that they found the inside of my house devastated by the Joker. There’s nothing left which isn’t violated. Nothing that could be reused, not even my boxers.

Staying on what C.S.I said the slashes on the walls are made with blood, the damages on the floors with a spade or a bayonet, and the drawers are full of expanded polyurethane with a splash of sperm, probably equine.

And there isn’t the shower curtain. This makes assume, by my esteemed colleagues, that after I have killed the Joker, I used it to get rid of the corpse.

I’ve been locked in an interrogation room of my own district for the last 30 minutes while, following turns, my colleagues come in to tell me how one of my gestures, even extreme, would be understandable to everyone, a jury included, and that there’s only to find the corpse to close the case.

Closing it on me, I imagine, or they’d have the cavalry to take off my handcuffs.

I stare at my partner, Arnold Floss, gloating almost till he cums in his pants and I realize that today I won’t go to Canada, and probably neither tomorrow.

“Call the Internal Affairs, Arnold. The Joker, or whatever you call him, ambushed me outside my door. I started the pursuing, but first I called to have back-up. Where was the back-up, Arnie?”

Did I strangled your orgasm, Arnie?

Good.

And now we wait the Internal Affairs.

Not that I trust them more than my colleagues here, but the enemies of my enemies are…

Apparently  are my enemies, too.

I expected to be coming somebody decent from the vipers’ nest, like Montoya, or Lipranzer, But instead, from the peak of the mountain has come down Jupiter pluvium in flesh and bones: The captain of the Internal Affairs, Gillian B. Loeb, where B is supposed to stay for Belfagor.

I see him coming in his ‘I-suck-lemons’ face, and that pained complexion between the color gray and green, where even the forced smile seems the result of a renal colic, and behind his shoulders I see Flass while is jerking off without using his hands again.

“Flass. Are the handcuffs necessary?”whines the ultimate hunter of honests cops. I think Flass stops himself from saying that they aren’t enough. It has to be a relief for him  not having to pretend to tolerate me anymore.

But he takes them off, and sits down behind Loeb.

I don’t think this is the procedure, and neither is legal.

“Lieutenant Gordon…” starts Loeb, while I massage my wrists, just to donate another moment of pleasure to Flass. 

“Does he have to be here?” I say pointing him.

Resign yourself, Arnie. I won’t have your taste for latex, ball gags and butt plugs, but I know what edging is. You won’t have one on my account.

“Do you have something to hide, Jim?”

“No, and you, Arnold?”

Who the fuck did I asked.

That damned clown I hold back with gunshots in my head chooses exactly that moment to transmit in technicolor.

 

_ “Gordon...I want you to kill him.” _

 

_ “What a bore. I think I’ll do it, but after that I’ll kill you, too. Maybe between the two of you, one will be able to make me have some fun.” _

 

What a big, damned son of a mean bitch. 

Fucking bastard.

“Can you allow me?” I ask, channelling the Boy Scout that I hadn’t been for almost forty years.

I wait Loeb to acconsent me and lift my t-shirt. The wound in the middle of the chest doesn’t look like a cut, but it is black staining enough to suit me.

“The clown. Who you call the Joker, hit me with something. I would have said with a shovel, but it might be a spade.” 

Flass must have suddenly lost his boner.

“I don’t remember where we were. But I had the phone with me. I think it’s possible to track my movements with the GPS.”

Arnie, were you really thinking that by taking away a shower curtain you could build up a case?

“He made me wear one of the garrottes that he use. Those he used to behead the Graysons.”

Now I have all the Flass’ attention. I add on purpose some shiver.

“He said something like: how boring. We’ll try the other one and left. I fainted, but before I heard the motor start. I was sure to be dead, but when I woke up I found the garrotte still loose. I think it crashed. For what I know , the clown is still out there searching the other, whoever he is, and I’m alive for share luck.”

Come on, Arnold, don’t swallow so loud or everybody, and every person here and outside, will know how dumb you are.

I must ask Alfred and the kiddos what happened to the garrotte.

 

 [Day 7]

And even today, we go to Canada tomorrow.

Barbara starts to give signs of dissatisfaction about the fact that I continue to postpone, and I can’t argue  when she start her tirades about that is always the same story.

I should already be in Canada to play a fair fight with the cold, that continues to be the lesser of two evils, and instead I’m here protecting my job from looters.

Yesterday, like I was fearing, Loeb tried an U-turn and all day has been going around with him and Flass using the words of my deposition against me, and me, with the help of a criminal defense attorney from Rowan, Leach and associates, the Wayne foundation law firm, repeating times and again to call a Grand Jury  and finish the show as soon as possible.

The only satisfaction of the whole day was seeing the sweat along Flass’ face while he was realizing that doesn’t exist any evidence that the clown is dead.

This morning I was adding a pair of Long Johns in the changes for the 48 hours case  when the C.S.I. called to ask me to take them to the point that, for the GPS, could be the place of my fight with the Joker.

Seeing the point where I died , in the sunlight, made me run to the opposite direction, to throw out beyond the security tape and not contaminate the proves.

Making the clown shut up requested more than one gunshot, in the place of his masterpiece, but I’m getting good at doing it.

Flass and I mean-mugged each other for various hours while the C.S.I. wasn’t finding enough blood to justify any homicide, but only few drops now and then that could be mine, as could be of the clown or of some laborer that got cut while he was working between the containers.

About noon some shreds of my shirt appeared stuck in the corner of a container much more into the maze, and a pair of hours later, more inside, the rest of the shirt got caught in the mechanism of the garrotte.

Based of what the agent of the C.S.I. unit, Ed Nygma,  said the friction created by the fabric in the mechanism made the motor burn out, while I should have ripped the blade’s edge trying to get free from the garrotte and the shirt that probably, at that point, was strangling me.

I will remember this agent. The memo with the order of the day about building a case, even without proof, against Jim Gordon must not have arrived him.

I must remind myself to thank Alfred, or Bruce, or Alfred and Bruce for how much they have been creative and perfect from every point of view. 

If it is like I think, the whole farce will wane down by the evening, and tomorrow I’ll really go to Canada to take back home Barbara and the kids. 

 

 [Day 8]

Archie Leach, Martha’s lawyer, ridiculed Loeb and Flass for have built up a not-case on no-proves in front of an embarrassed public prosecutor, and I got back my passport , that anyway I gave spontaneously.

Flass is a nervous wreck. I’d suggested him to relax with a good book, or a good movie, but leaving on his desk IT of Stephen King would have be too much in the nose.

Leaving the book on the shelf cost me enormous effort.

 

Loeb turned back on his perch, but Montoya and Lipranzer stayed to understand what happened to my request of backup.

On my phone there’s a call to 911.

At the 911 there’s a answer to my call at the same hour , but there isn’t the message.

Enrolment lost. Another job done wrong.

Lip and Montoya have gone to talk with the employee of the 911, and I am in a limbo between non-requested vacations and an unjustified suspension.

I think this is the moment to call Alfred and ask at what time the jet can be ready. I’ll arrive after midnight, and so tomorrow, but it’s alright. Maybe i’ll have the time to remind Barbara why we are better together than alone. 

 

 [Day 9]

No Canada. I’m still here in Gotham.

Yesterday evening I was at the mall to buy something better to see someone, in certain context, than a pair of Long john, when I found myself against a shelf with a note saying:” Men’s room. Now.”

Before going I checked the glock’s magazine, and just to be sure, the one of the revolver that I bring at the ankle, too.

The possibility of being Flass and his minions of the twenty first was really high, even if the act was too sophisticated for him.

I went and, at the end of the corridor that took to the Men’s room, a man wearing a white coat of the employed to the cleanings on a hoster and a badge really badly hidden. He said to the one before me that they had a burst pipe and after few seconds he told me to go in.

“ Do I have to leave here my pieces?” I asked to the bad disguised bodyguard.

“He said no.”

“Reckless.”

From behind the door a sergeant-instructor big voice shout at me: “Gordon, stop troubling that poor guy, and come in.”

I almost made the salut.

Finger. William Robert Finger: Bill for friends, but not for his staff or his subordinates.

I think only his wife is allowed to call him Bill in public.

I haven’t seen him since I got employed in the police of Gotham city, but I’d recognize that voice between thousand.

Why our big Kaunas wanted to see me in the mall restroom and not in his comfortable office in centre was, maybe, the easiest question to give an answer: secrecy.

At some point someone, I guess not me, will say this meeting has never existed.

I got in and the blond valkyrie of Finger’s  security detail … it’d look like an stereotype, but she’s blond , is a meter and ninety one tall, origins norwegians and her name is Hildr, for what I know she could really be a valkyrie… She stretched her hand demanding to have both of my guns and again Finger made a gesture to say to give up on that.

“If he kills me, I deserve to die, Hildy.”

I gave anyway my Glock to Hildy. For sure she knew about the other, but she didn’t care. Or she trusted the decision of her boss, or she was sure to be able to get me out before I could take out the other piece.

Finger got in front of me, with all the importance that his meter and seventy could permit him and with a grin on his face shout:  “Gordon… finally you attired the attention of the Blue Ghost! When I employed you I thought it could take six months max. Not seeing anything happen I was afraid you fell into it too… that would have disappointed the fact of being proud on my ability of reading the people.”

So in Gotham it’s called the Blue Ghost.

In Chicago was the Rubber Wall, in New York i think it’s called the Temple. Every city has its police corps deviated in the corps of the police; The basket where are harvested the rotten apples and healthy one become rotten.

“You see, Jim. Can I call you Jim? You have the word ‘honest’ tattooed on your forehead. they’d never taken you in the Blue Ghost and, luckily, you’ve never tried to get in or they’d killed you at the door. It’d have been like trying to infiltrate Harry Potter in the Death Eaters. A suicide. Am I wrong, Hildy?”

She nods, but he doesn’t wait her.

“For the Blue Ghost you are a horrible case of A.W.H., alive while honest.

But you aren’t the danger number one, nor the second or the third. You float between the seventh and eighth position. You don’t go above or below. The Ghost wants you dead, but without hurry. For you there’s time  and then it isn’t worth organizing a death squad. A stray bullet, sooner or later, will take your direction. that or a case gone wrong…”

“How do you know all of this, sir?”

“Jim, Jim,Jim. I said it’s impossible to infiltrate you, not that isn’t possible to infiltrate someone. The Ghost was here before us and, alas, will survive to us both.”

On that, from a few days, I’ve got some doubts.

“I’m from the ranks,” continues undaunted the boss, “I had my time to study it for years, as much as you’ll have when you’ll take my place. Get rid of it all? I’d wish! Hurt it really, really, really at the point to make it take years to regroup? that’s more possible. It’s been already done before, and it’ll be done again. and if the question is ”When”? I can answer soon at it, but before we gotta eliminate some pieces from the chessboard.”

A moment of silence, so sudden that for a moment I didn’t get it.

“And that’s where I come to play?” I ask.

“You’ve already started. If it was my move, you’d have got in, in another way, but in my defense I can say I was busy foiling an attack against my person. The sixth, Hildy?”

She shakes her head and rise eight fingers.

“The eighth. We’re keeping up the average. Anyway, while at the castle the king and his entourage was avoiding another regicide, the ugly and bad Blue Ghost tried to make a distraction and set free a beast in the city.” 

“The clown”

“Good. Write down, Hildy. Ten points for the Gryffindors. The clown had to make some noise and, I think,  get rid of a circus that annoyed another circus. We know nothing for sure about it.

Anyway, the beast escapes the leash and the Ghost, still struggling with the regicide, sends a squad to stop him. I guess, but one or two, the others are at the mercy of the rats and white crocodiles in our sewers.”

No advise of missing, nor in the ranks.

“Mercenary?”

“Write down, Hildy, another ten points to Gryffindor. But here is when you start to play, Harry Potter. Considering that every element of the Blue Ghost hates you, putting you on the way of the beast was sure from the moment that they gave you the case, but the fact that you survived, annoyed a lot of them and this, wanted or not, opens the field for my countermove.”   
“That is?”

 “You see, my dear Harry, I still can’t make my attack because I don’t know who nor where is hiding Voldemort this time, but right in this hours, and I’m glad to you, You made us find out Lucius Malfoy and, what do you think Hildy, Bellatrix?”

No, very convinced of Hildy.

“You’re right, my dear. I’d say Najimi. By next night, more for the pleasure than for the necessity, my phoenix order and I will take down Najimi, and this will be the diversive that will permit you, my dear Harry, to remove Lucius Malfoy from the chessboard and his minions, and me to make move forward my Severus Snape in the hierarchical pyramid of the Ghost. Is everything clear?”

“Sir, you’re lucky my daughter is the third time of reading the saga.”

“Excellent. Hildy, mark another ten point to Gryffindor. Now, tell me Harry. Have I to tell you who is under the mask of Lucius?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you able to do my request?”

“It depends, sir. Do you want an Expelliarmus or an Avada Kedavra?”

“Hildy, put down the talking hat, we have the real one. Flsss… pardon, Lucius Malfoy is an element enough integrated. I’m not sure if him or Najimi know who is the actual Voldemort, but I wouldn’t dislike asking it to them.”

“So an Expelliarmus.”

“If it’s possible. If not I won’t blame you.”

Hildy returned me the Glock and pointed the door. The chief Finger nodded and waited me to be ready before going out and stop me with a gesture.

“Harry, this restroom will destroy itself  in 5...4...3…”

At my doubtful eyes he smiled. “I’m joking. I mean that this conversation has never happened…”

Like I supposed.

“Yes, headmaster Dumbledore “. And I got out.

 

I worked all day beside Lucius and his minions. Nothing showy. Only paperworks.

I studied them to understand how many of them will try to hunt me when, this evening, I’ll take the phone and make them  know I know about Flass sending the clown against me and I can prove it.

If I’m good enough, by tomorrow everything it will be done and I’ll be able to go to Canada to pick up my family and return back home.

  
  


 [Day 10]

 

They’re six on three cars. All of them are from our warehouse, but I imagine that they regularly  result at their place. None of the tree will ever result that have been used in an operation of the police. Two Hondas and one Nissan. I’d expected only american cars from Flass. On the first car there are Flass and Miranda Donovan. I’m sorry for Miranda. Married with two sons in high school. I hope she’d enough clever to negotiate a plea bargain. 

Second Honda, Hank Zoeller and Freddy Boone.

Two patrol uniforms. Category: thugs. It doesn’t surprise me seeing them here. On the Nissan, JJ Cooms and Ricky Alvarez.

Cooms is the spitting image of Flass. Lazy, bully, and always busy thinking that rules are only for dummies. He’ll sing like Maria Callas when squeezed on. People like him have glass jaws.

It’s so bizarre seeing here Alvarez and not, for example, Harvey Bullock.

Ricky is, pardon, was an ascending star. An immaculate curriculum, a good percent of resolved cases, a good instinct. What a waste.

I wait them to come in the maze of containers and I jump off from my observing point… And I hurt myself so bad. Shit!

I must have broken my ankle, at least.

Good,I’ve just screwed up my plan.

How the fuck do the people who do parkour?

What a good deal this immortality.

Maybe I should have consulted  the manual before trying this jump. Maybe I should have taken it with me. I saw him using a sword. He’s good.

Uhm…

It doesn’t hurt anymore.

Seriously. You wouldn’t believe it.

Like a new one.

This immortality is really a good deal. No more complainings from me.

They continue to move in couples and they know the way. One advantage less.

Flass and Donovan aim to arrive against me from the main street. The other two squads are trying to close the exits from behind.

The A-team’s pincer movement.

I prefer Ten Little Niggers.

I should have worked more on the diversives, but I was trying to memorize the inside the maze and make it work at my side.

Let’s see what I can do. maybe an open container, that creaks.

Explosion?

Even pretty strong. What happened?

It wasn’t planned any explosion.

Message.

From Bruce.

_ The Nissan. _

 

I answer.

 

_ I told you to stay away from here. _

 

Answer.

 

_ I’m in my bedroom. _

 

_ What? _

 

_ One of my drones. it smacked in the Nissan. I’d lost the control :>) _

 

He continues.

 

_ Team 2 and 3 sent one to check. _

_ Team 3 is faster than team 2. _

 

Ramirez, and probably Boone.

 

_ I can read the GPS. Thanks for the diversive. _

 

_ Knock them out. _

 

It’s exactly what I wanna do.

 

I was right: Freddy Boone.

He’s panting so hard he wouldn’t hear a herd of bulls. too many donuts, Freddy.

He doesn’t see me coming, he doesn’t hear me. when he’ll wake up, probably he’ll ask if they took the plates of the truck that hit him.

I disarm and immobilize him. Two big plastic tie, and a piece of duct tape and one is out of the game. There are five left.

Ramirez is talking with those inside. He stopped everyone saying the Nissan in on fire. 

I’m not able to hear the answer.

I wonder if Ramirez knows how to free himself from a Full Nelson.

He’s young, and now they teach it at the academy. Let’s see if he has paid attention.

No. He must have been absent, or distracted.

He goes down that is almost beautiful.

Four guns weight over me, so I search manhole to drop them.

The magazine of Ramirez’s Glock, I keep it. It doesn’t exist a thing like “too many bullets” in situations like this one.

I turn back in and I go against Zoeller.

Zoeller is tough. He still does boxe tournaments and you can see it. He blocks my direct and responds with a hook that resounds in me like a gong.

I think I’d fainted on the ground if it wasn’t for this thing of immortality and all of its collateral effects.

One day, with a lucid mind, I’ll reflect and I’ll agree that’s not so bad.

Not now. I have to knock out a boxer.

He doesn’t protect the legs.

I see at least three points where I’d hit and hurt him. Instead I aim for the big target and for the disturb I take a sequence of punches that would have made ring all of three referees of an olympic match.

To hell with playing nice.

I get down and with the shoe sole I hit between the knee and the ankle, very hard. I hear the crack. I don’t think I broke any bone, but meniscus and ligaments will be out of the game for a long time.

Zoeller falls. Against my elbow. Another crack. Probably the nose.

With the third out, there are left only Crabbe, Goyle and, obviously, Malfoy.

I guess at this point Flass understood my plan and ordered his followers to assemble, probably where he expects to find me. It seems logic. One person alone can’t surround three.

But when was Flass logical? 

I find Miranda Donovan on me when I still haven’t finished to bind Zoeller yet; and Miranda teaches self-defense to whoever can pay to learn it.

Normally I don’t beat up women, but at the second tempt to shot me, I come on her and twist her wrist of the armed hand until it snaps.

Before I make the gun fall, she shots and it hits my chest, and seeing that I don’t go down, she screams at the others that I have the Kevlar.

Perfect. Now the other two will aim directly to the head, and I have a pain in the ribs and doesn’t make me breath.

It lasts a moment, but it’s the longest painful  moment of my entire life.

When I come back from Canada with Barbara and the kids, I’ll take Alfred in the side and I’ll make him teach me everything there’s to know about this fact of immortality.

The amateur night ends here.

Donovan seems to not bear the pain. She holds the broken wrist with the other hand, and sobs.

I continue thinking that beating up a woman is for the weaks, but she shot me in the chest, so I permit myself an exception. I save the face and try to make less damages possible, but I play another Full Nelson and put her to sleep. I took it easy on her, but I don’t feel less horrible.

There are two left. The most motherfuckers.

I think I can attack them together, they’re not so though.

Flass can’t be so dumb to even use the last element who’s able to look over his shoulders.

He can.

He can!

I’m few meters away from them when Cooms comes toward me, shooting blindly. He’s not even aiming. It’s more probable that a bouncing shot hits him than a direct hits me.

I let him get closer, with calm, and I use against him all the strength left from Donovan. He falls  down like an empty bag.

I’ve told that he has a glass jaw.

I don’t even waste anymore time binding him.

We’re at the end. Now I’ll reach Flass and I’ll provoke him till he confess everything to my digital recorder, that I keep hid on myself, then I’ll beat him and take him to Dumbledore. And finally I’ll be able to go to Canada and take back my family.

A scream.

Absolute panic.

In a lifetime you don’t hear a lot so desperate, and seeing that it’s not me, it must be Arnold.

I run to see what can terrify so much a person and the blood in my veins freeze.

Him.

The clown.

I’m so terrified that I even forget to shot at the one inside my head, and this one starts to do so much noise that the Sambodromo of Rio the night of carnival looks like a cloistered convent.

I see the garrotte around Flass’ neck. This one is old school way, with an iron string and two pieces of wood for handles.

I think it’s too thick for a string to do a beheading, but that’s a consideration that doesn’t help me to move myself.

I’m a deer paralyzed in front of the car lights.

I’d scream like Flass, that begs for his life, but I can’t neither do that.

The clown lift his eyes, sees me, and in a total-bored-way says:” Ah, you’re here too.”

And he shots me.

In the middle of the chest.

I guess it’s a gunshot for...big game...haunting. Elephants I guess.

  
  


 [Day 11]

 

Every TV  journal is transmitting from hours the scenes, recorded from a TV drone, of the clown shooting me and please himself for some minutes tie up and loosen the garrotte around Arnold flass’ neck, that in the moments where he can breath, begs for his life and confess all his sins, from yesterday till his confirmation.  

My murder and the grayson’s one are included, a lot unsolved cases that now can be reopened, the helping of Gillian Loeb to free overzealous policemen of the Blue Ghost, and  to take down the others.

the confession extorted like this will never have a probative value, but he opened so many breaches, Flass will fall like an house of cards.

The perfect Expelliarmus. So perfect that when I woke up in the hospital, right away, I punched Alfred in the face, pretending to still be victim of a panic attack.

Then I signed to go out against the thoughts of the doctors and then I think to have sent Alfred to get fucked up before two agents took me to the police station. He understood and took it with grace, from the punch that made his nose bleed out, to the friendly suggestion about what to do to himself and his Queen. When he’s embarrassed, his ears get all fire red.

Bruce deserved few kicks in the ass, too. there’s his direction behind all of this, but if I can avoid it, I don’t beat kids.

Anyway the video, that exonerates me from all, is so beautiful.

There’s even the clown that, while the sirens of the police are getting closer, takes his time to paint Flass’ face.

They found us painted like clowns, me included.

I won’t stay asking myself how I was wearing a jacket that I didn’t put on or how all of Flass death squad started speaking just after arriving at the police station.

It looks like they’re racing for who has more to say and offer in exchange of a plea deal.

I’ve passed all day giving explanations and compiling reports. A lot explanations and a lot, a lot of reports.

I could get hit with a stick on the fingers for not having followed the protocol, but since the precedent and the confession of Flass, I could simply get out of this situation like one who fucking risked his life and survived to tell it.

I don’t know how Dumbledore got rid of Najimi, but staying on what the news is saying the two stories are becoming one and Flass and Loeb are falling from the tower like the escalated it: together.

I don’t know if I should apologize to Alfred for the punch or not.

A part of me wants so. But the other part wants to punch him again.

He remains cool, I guess he’d accept the apologies and the punches with the same aplomb.

Anyway he must feel a little guilt because he made me find on my bed one of my suits, with trench and hat, too. And a note wrote on that the Jet will be ready for the 10 a.m. and he’ll take care of taking me there or giving me one the mansion’s cars.

I’m going to Canada.

Finally I go to Canada to Barbara and the kids.

I go taking back home my family , and I don’t care if it’ll take a day, a week, or a month. I don’t care what concessions I’ll have to do, we’ll return to be a family and if Barbara still wants to, we start building up another child. 

We might start it tonight.

I’m looking forward to our first moment together in a month, that before, while I was showering, Ihad to put back in line the little soldier, a couple of times.

 

19:59

Now I dry up, I wear something and I borrow the most spacious SUV that we have in the garage.

I might also ask Alfred if the Caregiver’s house could be ready for my return.

Knowing his efficiency I don’t doubt about it.

 

The phone buzzes.

It must be on vibration since last night.

Babs. Fourth call.

I bring the telephone to the ear and I don’t make it on time to say “Babs, darling, I’m coming…” that my daughter’s sobs terrify me more than the fake joker last night.

“Dad.” she sobs.

“Something happened to mum,” she mumbles while she cries.

“Come right now…”

The words aneurysm, and instantaneous, arrive far away, while I fall on my knees and weep like I’ve never done, neither while the Joker was torturing me.

Too much tomorrow, tomorrow,tomorrow…

If I left when…

If I went with…

If…

If.

I remember only a “Darling, I’m coming right now,” mumbled between my sobs, and Alfred who puts me on my legs, and dress me like I was baby.

I’ve blurry images of the journey from the Wayne Mansion to the airport, and Alfred supporting me while we climb up the stairs.

I don’t remember him going down the jet, in facts he’s here, sitting in front of me , while the jet takes off. 

I’m going to Canada, but way over the last deadline.

  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  



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